The school playground can be a lonely place for a child if they haven't got anyone to play with. But a special type of bench is helping pupils make friends and get people talking about bigger issues too.

One day, during her usual chat with her eight-year-old son about school, Tracey Cooney got an answer she didn't expect.

"There was nobody to play with. Everyone was playing in their own little groups," he confided.

She was surprised because he was usually outgoing and confident. But two of his friends had been sick that day, so they weren't at playtime.

Cooney felt a little upset, but remembered something she had seen on social media and wondered if it could help children in his situation. It's called a Buddy Bench.

The idea is simple - if a child feels lonely, they can go to the bench as a signal that they need someone to play with. Another child will see them, go and talk to them and include them in their games.

So Cooney asked other parents and the head teacher at Castlemartyr National School in Cork, Ireland, whether they would be interested in getting one - their answer was, "Yes."

Image caption
Castlemartyr is the 247th school to receive a bench from Buddy Bench Ireland

Also known as friendship benches, these pieces of playground furniture have been around for a while, in various countries.

But the people who make them in Ireland are trying to do something different with them.

"We use the bench as a reminder for children of things like communication, mutual support and opening up about feelings," says Judith Ashton, a psychotherapist and co-founder of social enterprise Buddy Bench Ireland.

But do children actually use the bench? And are they worried about how it makes them look?

"They don't see it as stigmatised," says Sinead McGilloway, director of the Centre for Mental Health and Community Research at Maynooth University, who led a study of 117 pupils at three schools which have benches.

Forty per cent of the children she questioned said they had used the bench, and 90% said if they saw someone else sitting on it they would talk to them.

Image caption
Children role-play to practise what it feels like using the bench

However, a small sample of parents did raise the concern of stigma.

And this is where the bigger aim of the project comes in, because the Buddy Bench team wants to tackle a problem that affects both young and old in Irish society: a reluctance to confront mental health.

"People spoke out of the corner of their mouth about it," says Michelle O'Brien, one of the workshop leaders. Thinking back to her childhood, she says a mental health issue was seen as a fault in the family.

"Instead of the word depression ever being used, it was, 'Their nerves are at 'em.' It was a lot of factors, I think religion was a massive part of it."

The Buddy Bench team aims to reach every pupil in Ireland, seeing this as an early intervention to tackle mental health problems across the generations.

Mental Health Stigma in Ireland: Studies and Statistics

40% of Irish people would conceal a mental health problem from family, friends and colleagues (The Green Ribbon Report, 2017)